page_title: J. William Fulbright
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: J. William Fulbright / Early life
context_page_description: James William Fulbright was a United States Senator representing Arkansas from January 1945 until his resignation in December 1974. Fulbright is the longest serving chairman in the history of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A Southern Democrat and a staunch multilateralist, he supported the creation of the United Nations and was a signatory to the Southern Manifesto. Fulbright also opposed McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee and later became known for his opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War. His efforts to establish an international exchange program eventually resulted in the creation of a fellowship program which bears his name, the Fulbright Program.
context_section_description: Fulbright was born in Sumner, Missouri, the son of Roberta Fulbright (née Waugh) and Jay Fulbright. In 1906 the Fulbright family moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas. His mother was a businesswoman, who consolidated her husband's business enterprises and became an influential newspaper publisher, editor, and journalist. Fulbright's parents enrolled him in the University of Arkansas's College of Education's experimental grammar and secondary school.
  Fulbright earned a history degree from the University of Arkansas in 1925, where he became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. He was elected president of the student body and a star four-year player for the Razorback football team from 1921 to 1924.
  Fulbright later studied at Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar at Pembroke College and graduated in 1928. Fulbright's time at Oxford made him into a lifelong Anglophile, and he always had warm memories of Oxford. Fulbright credited his time at Oxford with broadening his horizons as he learned much about the world beyond America and particulay credited one of his professors and friends, R. B. McCallum, with encouraging him to think about the world as an interlinked entity, where developments in one part of the world would always impact on the other parts. McCallum was a great admirer of Woodrow Wilson, a supporter of the League of Nations, and a believer that multinational organizations were the best way to keep the peace. Fulbright remained close to McCallum for the rest of his life and regularly exchanged letters with his mentor until his death in 1973. At Oxford, he played on the rugby and lacrosse teams, and every summer, Fulbright decamped for France ostensibly to improve his French but really just to enjoy life in France. Fulbright's "one world" philosophy encouraged by McCallum made him skeptical of isolationism. He received his law degree from The George Washington University Law School in 1934,  was admitted to the bar in Washington, DC, and became an attorney in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
  Fulbright was a lecturer in law at the University of Arkansas from 1936 to 1939. He was appointed president of the school in 1939, making him the youngest university president in the country. He held that post until 1941. The School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas is named in his honor, and he was elected there into Phi Beta Kappa. He was a member of the Founding Council of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. In September 1939, Fulbright, as president of the University of Arkansas, issued a public declaration declaring his sympathy with the Allied cause and urged the United States to maintain a pro-Allied neutrality. In the summer of 1940, Fulbright went a step further and declared it was in America's "vital interest" to enter the war on the Allied side and warned that a victory by Nazi Germany would make the world a much darker. The same year, Fulbright joined the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.
  Fulbright's sister, Roberta, married Gilbert C. Swanson, the head of the Swanson frozen-foods conglomerate, and was the maternal grandmother of media figure Tucker Carlson. In June 1941, Fulbright was suddenly fired from the University of Arkansas by the Governor, Homer Martin Adkins. He learned that the reason for his sacking was that Adkins had been offended that a newspaper owned by Fulbright's mother had supported the governor's opponent in the 1940 Democratic primary, and that was the governor's revenge. Upset at the way that the governor's caprice had ended his academic career, Fulbright became interested in politics.
caption: An earlier portrait of Senator Fulbright.
exif: {}